


Whatever Happened to That Strange Girl?

by AndreM962



Category: DCU (Comics), Young Romance (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Character, Past Relationship(s), Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26602621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreM962/pseuds/AndreM962
Summary: "The story NO ONE dared me to write!" Over a decade after the original story, Liz Blake decides to pay a visit to an old acquaintance. (Note: This is based on a story published in Young Romance #197. Go look it up if you need some context.)
Relationships: Past Liz/Agnes, Past Liz/Fred
Kudos: 1





	Whatever Happened to That Strange Girl?

I never thought I'd come here again, but life has a way of not working out like you wanted it to. It's raining. 'Of course it's raining', I think to myself. It always rains in times like this. When did my life turn into a hokey comic book?

But I'm not gonna let it get to me. I have a lot more to worry about than a little rain. So I knock on the door...

And the person who opens it is my ex-girlfriend from high school, Agnes.

"Liz? What are you doing here?" Huh. I thought Agnes would be more angry at me for not having talked to her or called for over 10 years, but I must look as pathetic as I feel.

Looking at Agnes' face, it's almost like she hasn't changed a bit since our highschool days. Same hairstyle, same eyes, same lips. I can only hope she's as tolerant of my bullshit as she was back then, too.

But even if Agnes hasn’t changed a bit, our relationship – and the world around us – certainly has.

_"Sweet sixteen! Happy birthday, honey." Dad told me as he brought me my birthday cake. A little early to celebrate, I thought. The most important guest hadn't arrived yet._

_"We should have invited some of your friends, Liz. This is an occasion for young people." My mother said. Mom always wanted me to be popular. 'Popular' was pretty much synonimous with 'Happy' back then._

_"Agnes is coming over later, mother. She's treating me to a movie for my birthday." I replied. I still remember the way my mom frowned a little at that. I know what she was thinking. 'How will Liz ever get a husband if she never hangs out with any boys?' She didn't know about me and Agnes, of course. It was so easy to hide those things back when no one was really thinking about it, or daring to think about it._

_I should point out here that I don't hate my mother for acting like that. She just wanted me to succeed in life. It was the seventies, after all. It really did seem like I would be miserable if I never found a husband. Hell, the only reason I was dating Agnes was because I thought there was no way a boy would ever be interested in me..._

_Or, at least, I_ thought _that was the reason._

"Are you okay? Come in. You're gonna catch a cold, standing in the rain like that." Agnes' words brought me back to the present.

I go inside and sit down in Agnes' couch. "You want me to make you a coffee? Warm you up?"

"No, it's fine", Liz replied. I take a deep breath and start explaining the reason why I came here.

"I... um. I broke up with- with Fred." I mentally kick myself for sounding so unsure. 'What is wrong with you? Why are you acting like a scared child? You're the captain of a basketball team, for crying out loud. Agnes isn't going to yell at you.'

_"Seriously, what is wrong with you?" Fred yelled at me. I wasn't surprised he wasn't taking it well. I hadn't been the best girlfriend lately._

_"I just- I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to lie to you." I told him. "But there was someone else I was lying to, Fred. I was lying to myself. I just wanted to tell myself I was normal. But... I'm not."_

_"I should have known better," He replied. "Should have known that there was no way you could be anything other than a-"_

_"DON'T say it. Don't you dare say it."_

_He slumped his shoulders. I didn't know what to say, didn't know what to think. It wasn't as though what me and Fred had wasn't genuine. But it wasn't love, either._

"Fred? Right, I remember. You started dating him right after you broke up with me." Agnes said. Wow. Had we really drifted so far apart, no one told Agnes about how me and Fred had gotten engaged?

"It all happened so fast. I never told you why I did it. Why I started dating him. But even if I had told you back then, it would've been wrong, because even I didn't know the real reason.

...Remember when we went to the movies?"

_Hanging out with Agnes in public was always so bittersweet. When I was in her house, we could hug and kiss and hold hands as much as we wanted, but everywhere else we had to act like we were just friends. Perfectly ordinary, platonic friends. Sometimes I could almost convince myself of it._

_The Haunting was playing in the theater. It's an old black and white horror movie. Agnes was an old movie buff. Classic relationship trick - take your girl out to watch a horror flick and then hold her close while she's scared and vulnerable. I thought I was going to be the one doing the holding, but I didn't expect the movie to be the way it was. There were ghosts and hauntings to be sure, but..._

_"Do you think the house was really haunted, Liz? Or was it just in Eleanor's imagination?" Agnes asked me afterwards, while we were walking back._

_"Well, at least some of it had to be real, I think. But I think Eleanor was seeing things that weren't there, too. I think, in a way, she was already haunted before she steeped foot in the house. I think she was being haunted for a long time."_

_"Excellent answer! I knew you weren't just a pretty - if rather boyish - face." Agnes said, clasping her hands together in approval. I smiled, but I couldn't stop thinking about Eleanor._

_Was_ that _what was wrong with me? Was I mentally ill, like Eleanor was? Every single paper or opinion piece I read about... people like me sure seemed to think so. Agnes made me feel happy, but it never felt_ normal _to hang out with her, and that's what I wanted to be. Normal. Not strange. Not weird, not..._

_Well, you know what I mean._

_"Same time tomorrow?" Agnes asked me._

_"Sure... Sure, Agnes." I said to her, and waved her goodbye. And I can say that, in that moment, I was being honest. I did mean to see her again tomorrow._

_But tomorrow was also the day I accidentally bumped into Fred Reese during basketball practice, and he fell in love with me._

_"OOF!" Fred screamed, as he fell into the ground._

_"Oh, I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?" I leaned down to help him up._

_"Yeah, right in the heart!" He said to me. It was a lame pickup line, but for someone who had never been given one, it was like finding water in a desert._

_"I'll be waiting for you after the game, Liz. You can help me limp home." I tried to resist, I swear. But all I could think about was how this was just like a romance novel. The boy and the girl bump into each other, and they fall in love, and live happily ever after._

_So even though I promised to meet you, Agnes, I instead took him home from school. We were all alone, just the two of us. A boy and a girl. We held hands... then we kissed..._

_And on that day, me, the girl who was haunted by who I was, by what I was... chose to see things that weren't there._

"That's... I'm really sorry, Liz. I didn't know." I don't know what's more painful, her words or the way she's staring at me.

I don't want her to feel guilty about anything. She had nothing to do with my reasons for leaving her behind. So I tell her she shouldn't be sorry. "You're not the who spent a whole decade pretending like your girlfriend who meant the world to you didn't even exist just to feel like you weren't a freak." I give her a self-mocking smirk.

"You're not a freak, Liz. I never- in all our days together, I never meant to make you feel like one. I just wanted to make you feel wanted by someone."

"Yeah, and I just... threw it all away. How did you ever do it, Liz? How did you ever feel normal?"

"You know, I never told you this, either. Why I started talking to you, befriending you, falling in love with you? It was because of the way everyone talked about you in high school. Remember? It was always 'strange girl' this, 'strange girl' that... people were always talking about you. You were so different from any girl I ever heard about. And I wanted to know what the deal was. What was so strange about this girl that everyone kept mentioning?

But then I met you, and I still didn't get it. Because when I took a chance and kissed you, and you kissed right back, I knew that strange girl wasn't so strange at all. Because she was just like me. And that was all there was to it. Knowing there was someone out there who was like me was all I needed to know I _was_ normal. Just a different kind of normal."

"I see." I said, impartially. It was amazing how me and Agnes could be so completely different from each other. Our relationship made me feel weird, but to her, it helped her feel normal. Though, I guess having more understanding parents must have helped somewhat.

Our conversation was interrupted by the familiar _bring bring_ noise of a telephone. Agnes picks it up.

"Oh, hi, Ella. Why haven't you - Oh, you have to work overtime? That's okay. I know, I know, I'll get dinner ready. Love you too, honey." She hung the phone back on the wall.

"Ah, that was my girlfriend, Ella. You would like her, Liz, she's just as much of a tomboy as you are." I stare at her, a little dumbfounded. Hearing Agnes moved on from me is a little sad, but I'm happy for her all the same.

"Are you going to be okay now? I don't mean to impose, but it's getting late..." I nodded.

"Yeah. I better go back home. Sort all this out. Maybe I'll move in with my parents again." I got up and walked to the door. Agnes opens it for me again.

"You'll manage, Liz. You always do. You always spent all your time fixing problems."

"Yeah - and maybe this time, I won't spend so time trying to fix problems that aren't there." I wave goodbye at her from outside the door. I was alone again. I started walking back to my apartment. Fred said he was going to spend the night over at his friends' - that he didn't want to see me, at least for a while. That gave me some time to myself.

The rain had stopped, but I still felt lost.

Where would I even begin? All the plans I made for my future were in disarray just because I made a stupid mistake. How would I even explain why I broke up with Fred to my parents? To my mom, especially? What am I going to do if-

_SLAM_. I crash into someone in the middle of my internal monologue. I couldn't see them because it was really dark out by this point. I go toward them to help back up. Now that I'm closer, I can see that it's a woman. She has brown hair tied up in a ponytail, glasses, and a dark complexion. Out of habit, I tell her I'm sorry for bumping into her.

"Nah, don't worry about it. I was in my own little world back there. No surprise I wound up bumping into someone. I shouldn't start walking while moping."

That last line piques my curiosity. "Moping?"

"Yeah, just got in the middle of a really messy breakup. I'm still not really able to process it. So I got distracted."

"That must have been bad. How long were you and him together for?" I ask her. Normally I don't talk to strangers, but I'm compelled to. Her situation is too similar to mine for me to not get involved.

"'Him'? Hah!" The woman in front of me gives a hearty laugh. "She was a girl, and a damn fine one at that!" She says, with a pride in her voice I could only dream of having.

"Too bad things didn't work out, then. I actually just went through a breakup myself. Isn't that a crazy coincidence?" I don't get it. Just now I was feeling so down on my luck. I had just said goodbye to the only person I thought could really understand me. But now, I'm smiling. Am I just seeing things that aren't really there again?

"What's your name, anyway? I can't keep calling you 'Woman that made me fall over this one time'." She jokes.

"It's Liz." "Brenda. Pleased to meet you." We shake hands.

"Hey, you want to grab a cup of coffee sometime, share breakup stories maybe?" She says sure, and waves me goodbye, seeming a little happier than she was before.

I know I'm still just a lost as before. I don't know how what the future will bring, or if it will even be a happy one. I don't know where me and Fred will stand when the smoke clears. Don't know how I'm going to come out to my parents, or if I even should come out.

But I'm going to put my best foot forward, just like I've always done. Because today, that young girl who told herself she was strange because of who she loved, who was haunted for so long by who and what she was...

Suddenly, she doesn't feel so strange, anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> A.N. And so it ends with a new beginning.
> 
> I think you can tell why I wrote this story. The moment I read Young Romance #197, the whole plot for this fic just downloaded into my brain. "That Strange Girl" was well-meaning for its time, but it couldn't possibly understand what girls like Liz were going through. I don't think any lesbians - yes, we can say it now - were actually helped by reading that story. And yet... how many of them, especially in 1974, may have had stories just like Liz? How many chose to date and marry and have children with men they never truly loved, because it was "right"?
> 
> So, with the intent of correcting mistakes of a half-century ago, and giving Liz a genuinely happy ending, I wrote this story. I tried to make it as authentic as possible, including the fact that words like 'gay', 'homesexuality', etc are never said in the story (it truly was 'The Love that Shan't Speak Its Name' back then), and the ending - Liz meeting another girl and (possibly) falling in love again. It was basically tradition for romance stories to end like that back in the day, though I made it a little more ambiguous. Maybe it really was 'love at first sight' this time. Or maybe just meeting someone who had the same problems as her made Liz feel a little more confident.
> 
> Liz and Agnes did watch a movie in the original story, though it wasn't shown which it was. I went with the 1963 version of The Haunting. Somehow, it seemed thematically appropriate, what with the ambiguous tension between Theo and Eleanor in the movie. And horror movies are always good for date nights.
> 
> My original plan was to write the story in a comic book script format, but I'm not good enough to do that. And I also wanted to write it in third person, but I felt it hampered the emotional impact. I know very few people will probably fully appreciate this story, but I hope - if any young eyes are reading this - that it helps them if they're going through similar problems. In the way the original tale never did.


End file.
